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Sunday, 10 May 2015

Is Work Life Balance Only For the Financially Freed?

Time flies this year
for me. In a blink of eye, 4 months had past. I had been extremely busy in work
since the start of the year. This is primarily because of my company being
acquired by a bigger company and an expanded role. Do not envy, no commensurated-salary increment! :(

I returned to office
last week, after a fortnight of ICT, and work is piling. To make things worst, in the next month or
so, my schedules are already packed either with overseas travel or visitors coming to
Singapore.

For all my ill-fated
busy work schedule, I still appreciate that I am at least able to have weekend
free, for my family including my 4-month old, and also time for myself.

When time is so
limited primarily for earning money, we often lament “how to achieve
Work Life Balance?”

What is Work Life Balance (WLB)?

Few days ago, I asked
my wife what is the definition of work life balance (WLB)? She said spending
quality time between work and family. Good answer, but not exactly holistic.

Most of us appear to
know what is WLB by our own standard, but maybe it is good to know its formal definition.
Accordingly to Wikipedia,

“Work life balance, is a concept including proper prioritizing
between "work" and "lifestyle", where in general,

WORK includes:

Career

Ambition

LIFESTYLE includes:

Health

Family

Pleasure

Leisure

Spiritual development / mediation

Yes, PRIORITISING is critical.

Work Life Balance is Only For the Rich/Financially Freed?

To some, WLB is for the rich or
financially freed people only. This group believed that it is only when you are
financially freed, then you can be mentally freed to pursue what you really
wanted to do! For average Singaporean, you have to slog and work. “Where got
WLB?”

Agree or Not?

It's no denial that
being financially free or having more money will put us in a better position of
pursuing WLB. In most cases, it also provides the mental freedom to pursue our
pleasure and leisure. A bigger purse can also help us to employ the best doctor
when we meet with health problems. We are also able to have more expensive
overseas family tours, expensive dinners, entertainments etc. For the lower
income family, WLB’s correlation with money is even stronger.

When asking the
questions of Money being directly proportional to WLB, it immediately leads me
to think of the below examples.

Join Government Sector

I have many middle
class friends in their mid to late 30s who, after setting up families want to
have more time for their kids. They left their higher paying jobs in
private sectors to join government sectors to have more time and better work
life benefits.

For e.g. several
government companies had implemented Flexible Work Arrangements (FWAs) which
includes flexi work start and end time; work from home few days a month.
S’pore government has also started incentive for organizations who
promote WLB or work-life friendly environment. To know more, please refer to MOM
Work-life Grant – click here.

So lesser income, for
more time! Money is NOT directly proportional to WLB in this case!

Financially Freed, but Mentally Not
Freed

I had an ex-colleague
and let’s call him Mr. L. He is 58 at that time, when we were working in the
same company. Mr. L is successfully in his early career climbing in an MNC to
MD position in his thirties. Mr. L is frugal and owns many properties all fully
paid, supplemented with monthly rental income. His children are already
working. In another words, money is never a problem. In fact, he is financially
freed way before he is 50 years of age.

Nevertheless, Mr. L
did not achieve the WLB he deserved then, or at least the mental freedom he supposingly
has in work.

While in my company, for
some reasons, Mr. L becomes an eyesore to the CEO. He was frequently picked,
for matters not his fault. He was even humiliated in front of junior staffs. After
office hours, he received repeated text messages pressurizing him on trivial
work related matters. It was nightmare for Mr. L but strangely he continued to
swallow his pride for more than 1 year.

His wife, who is a
highly paid executive, persuaded him to leave his job. Mr. Ldid not accede, even when later his Salary
was halved.

After he joined my
team, I asked him why didn't he leave earlier, since money was never a concern
of him? Are the sufferings worth it?

The reply: "I
needed something to do!"

To me, this is a
classic example of being financially freed, but not mentally freed!

What Do You Think?

In my opinion, money
is just a catalyst to WLB but definitely does not cause it. I have to admit I am financially
stronger now than many years ago. But it does not mean that I have less
work-life-balance at that time compared to now. Perhaps, it is a matter of
mentality – Choice, Discipline and Desire!

Perhaps it is more important
to know yourself better, knows what you really love and want to do, earlier in
your life. Rather than to wait till the latter part of your life, that even if
you have financial freedom, you will still be mentally restricted!

So how about you? Do
you agree that having more money means having more work life balance?

7 comments:

I think WLB is a matter of mindset. Learning when to say no is as important as when to be gung ho and say yes. I think sitting down, doing your sums and understand what is your own FU$ is important. It gives you a direct monetary value to when you can say no to extra work and when you should say yes.

For my job, I like to see I have very good WLB even though I work 7 days a week. My work is a blend of work and family. When I'm at home and my wife is around, it doesn't even feel like work. Sometimes my wife will drive me to places, wait for me for 2 hrs for my work to end, then we'll go shopping and hve some tea before I hve to go again. When we blend in work with life, it became a kind of work that we don't have to avoid. It's no longer segregated into work time and family time. Work time IS family time ;)

Symbolic work/life boundaries are almost impossible to maintain. Why? You are your business. Your business is your life, just like your life is your business—which is also true for family, friends, and interests — so there is no separation because all those things make you who you are. Incredibly successful people find ways to include family instead of ways to exclude work. They find ways to include interests, hobbies, passions, and personal values in their daily business lives. If you can't, you're not living — you're just working.

Thanks for the article. It is very nice and I agree. Provided you must love your work to be able to include family and interest in it. So it still goes back to the issue of knowing who u r n what u really want then find a work that u really like that can generate income n incorporate ur life!

Ok I need to stop the Sh...t of always reminding knowing who we r? haha. Thanks a lot once again.

It's so hard to maintain work/life balance right now! When I was studying in the college, I thought it's quite hard to manage personal life with education. I even used http://flashessay.strikingly.com/ for help! But now I realized that I had plenty of time back that. And now I don't even have any helper(

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This blog and its contents contain the opinions and views of me. It is not a recommendation to purchase or sell the stocks of any of the companies or investments herein discussed. If a reader requires expert financial advice, a competent professional should be consulted. I cannot guarantee the accuracy of the information contained herein the blog and its contents. Other than being the shareholders of some of the stocks discussed herein at the time of writing, I am not in any way related to the company mentioned within the blog. I specifically disclaim any responsibility for any liability, loss, or risk, professional or otherwise, which is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the use and application of any contents of this blog.